The Microsoft Ajax Content Delivery Network (CDN) hosts popular third party JavaScript libraries such as jQuery and enables you to easily add them to your Web applications. For example, you can start using jQuery which is hosted on this CDN simply by adding a <script> tag to your page that points to ajax.aspnetcdn.com.

By taking advantage of the CDN, you can significantly improve the performance of your Ajax applications. The contents of the CDN are cached on servers located around the world. In addition, the CDN enables browsers to reuse cached third party JavaScript files for web sites that are located in different domains.

The CDN supports SSL (HTTPS) in case you need to serve a web page using the Secure Sockets Layer.

The CDN hosts the following third party script libraries which have been uploaded, and are licensed to you, by the owners of those libraries:

jQuery (www.jquery.com)

jQuery UI (www.jqueryui.com)

jQuery Mobile (www.jquerymobile.com)

jQuery Validation (www.jquery.com)

jQuery Cycle (www.malsup.com/jquery/cycle/)

jQuery DataTables (http://datatables.net/)

Ajax Control Toolkit (owned by the Outercurve Foundation – www.outercurve.org)

The Microsoft Ajax CDN also includes the following libraries which have been uploaded by Microsoft:

ASP.NET Ajax

ASP.NET MVC JavaScript Files

ASP.NET SignalR JavaScript Files

Microsoft does not claim ownership of any third-party libraries hosted on this CDN. The copyright owners of the libraries are licensing these libraries to you. Any rights that you may have to download and use such libraries are granted solely by the respective copyright owners. Because these are not Microsoft libraries, Microsoft provides no warranties or intellectual property rights licenses (including no implied patent rights) for the third party libraries hosted on this CDN.

If you wish to submit your JavaScript library and your library is one of the top JavaScript libraries (as listed on http://trends.builtwith.com) or extensions/plugins to these libraries that are (a) popular; or (b) helpful for use on ASP.NET then please contact AjaxCDNSubmission@Microsoft.com.

ajax.microsoft.com renamed to ajax.aspnetcdn.com

The CDN used to use the microsoft.com domain name and has been changed to use the aspnetcdn.com domain name. This change was made to increase performance because when a browser referenced the microsoft.com domain it would send any cookies from that domain across the wire with each request. By renaming to a domain name other than microsoft.com performance can be increased by as much to 25%. Note ajax.microsoft.com will continue to function but ajax.aspnetcdn.com is recommended.

Old Format: http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-1.8.0.js

New Format: http://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-1.8.0.js

Visual Studio .vsdoc Support

To use the .vsdoc files properly with Visual Studio 2008 you need to make sure that you have VS 2008 SP1 installed and the hotfix for vsdoc files installed. You can get these from here:

Using ASP.NET Ajax from the CDN

When using ASP.NET 4, you can redirect all requests for ASP.NET framework scripts to the CDN. Retrieving scripts from the CDN instead of your local web server can substantially improve the performance of public ASP.NET websites.

Use the ScriptManager EnableCDN property to redirect all ASP.NET framework script requests to the Microsoft Ajax CDN:

To allow your page to fallback to loading jQuery from a local path on your own website if the CDN happens to be unavailable, add the following element immediately after the element referencing the CDN:

<script>
// Fallback to loading jQuery from a local path if the CDN is unavailable
(window.jQuery || document.write('<script src="/scripts/jquery-1.9.0.min.js"><\/script>'));
</script>

The following sample page uses the CDN version of the jQuery library (with fallback to a local copy) to display the contents of a div element when a button is clicked.

You can learn more about jQuery and download a local copy of jQuery by visiting the jQuery Web site.

Using jQuery UI from the CDN

The CDN also hosts the jQuery UI library. The jQuery UI library includes a rich set of widgets and effects that you can use in your ASP.NET applications. For example, the following page illustrates how you can use the jQuery UI Datepicker in the context of an ASP.NET Web Forms application to display a pop-up calendar:

Third-Party Files on the CDN

The CDN hosts some of the most popular third party JavaScript libraries. Microsoft does not claim ownership of any third-party libraries hosted on this CDN. The copyright owners of the libraries are licensing these libraries to you. Any rights that you may have to download and use such libraries are granted solely by the respective copyright owners. Because these are not Microsoft libraries, Microsoft provides no warranties or intellectual property rights licenses (including no implied patent rights) for the third party libraries hosted on this CDN.

Installs powered by the Microsoft Web Platform Installer

The product(s) you are about to install leverage the Web Platform Installer (WebPI) for installation. By downloading and using the Web Platform Installer (WebPI), you agree to the license terms and privacy statement for WebPI. This installer will contact Microsoft over the Internet to retrieve product information. WebPI uses the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP), which is turned on by default, see privacy statement for more information. Some of the Microsoft software obtained through WebPI may use CEIP. To view which software uses CEIP, see here.